Louis Icart — The Papal Aviary: Grotesque Throne Room with Bird Courtiers, 1936
$ 49.9
Description
Louis Icart — The Papal Aviary: Grotesque Throne Room with Bird Courtiers, 1936. The text says: Parlez bas, dit l'édituë, or, "Speak softly.". The attendants are birds: red-robed, solemn, arranged with ceremonial precision. Owls keep watch in the shadows. Speak softly in the presence of the bird-beings on their throne. Louis Icart — Original Color Heliogravure, Gargantua et Pantagruel (Le Vasseur Edition, 1936) This print shows Rabelais at his most politically dangerous, the Church as an aviary of grotesque creatures presided over by a skeleton-bird in a mitre. Icart's rendering: A throne room of twisted Solomonic columns and cage-work architecture. On the throne, a skeletal bird-nosed figure in papal vestments. Below, a lone supplicant raises one finger — warning, petition, or simply acknowledgment that something is very wrong here. The attendants are birds: red-robed, solemn, arranged with ceremonial precision. Owls keep watch in the shadows. Rabelais' anticlerical fury rendered as pure Gothic nightmare, and Icart fully commits to the darkness . The finger raised to the lips isn't petition or warning — it's the sacristan hushing you before the papal aviary. The text says: Parlez bas , dit l'édituë, or, "Speak softly." Speak softly in the presence of the bird-beings on their throne. The grotesque solemnity of the chamber, the red-robed bird courtiers arranged with ceremonial gravity, the skeletal pope — and the little man at the front saying keep your voice down. Rabelais' joke is that the institution demands reverence for something that is plainly absurd. Icart illustrates it as straight-faced as he can manage, which makes it funnier. Artist: Louis Icart (1888–1950) Medium: Multiple etched copper plates. Original color heliogravure (photogravure), Printer: Draeger Frères, Paris Publisher: Le Vasseur et Cie, Paris Year: 1936 Paper: Vélin d'Arches Plate mark (cuvette) is visible and lovely, the visble physical artifact of an intaglio copper plate pressed into heavy paper. Sheet size: approximately 9.5 × 7.25 inches, full margins as issued From # 446 of 900 Limited Edition Sets. Photos of the colophon and "Justification du Tirage" are for informational purpose only and are not part of the sale. Le Vasseur's 1936 edition is the definitive illustrated Rabelais of the Art Deco period — a luxury bibliophile production printed by Draeger Frères in color heliogravure using multiple etched copper plates. Louis Icart built his reputation on elegant, sensual depictions of Parisian women — polished, fashionable, and largely decorative. The 1936 Rabelais commission placed him in entirely different territory: broad physical humor and the full carnival spirit of a text that has been transgressing decorum since 1532. The result is unmistakably Icart in line and color, but working in a register — grotesque, comic, uninhibited — that his commercial output rarely required of him. Ships flat, protected in rigid mailer with archival sleeve and stiffeners.
